


The little ones are like her babies.

by JeckParadox



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Betrayal, Gen, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-24
Updated: 2015-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4642710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JeckParadox/pseuds/JeckParadox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yellow Diamond is on Earth, and Peridot goes to her side, finally ready to destroy the Crystal Gems once and for all. Only, what use is a damaged tool? A broken tool, minus a leg, damaged by the Crystal Gems? Peridot crushed the robonoid without a second thought.<br/>The irony doesn't elude her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The little ones are like her babies.

"So, this is it?" She narrowed her eyes, turning her head slightly. "Both the White and Blue Diamonds lost their wars against Rose Quartz and her armies in the far past, _but now_?" Peridot gulped, but didn't move, beside one hand constantly whirring like a copter to support herself on only one foot. "Tell me, peridot A136. How many of them do you count?"

"There were complications, even Jasper wasn't able to-"

"Peridot A136. Tell me, how many of these Crystal Gems do you see?"

"...A two-gem fusion, and then two more. And Steven." She said sadly. "But I was stranded, our destabilization weapons were ineffective, our informant went rogue, and Jasper was captured. What was I supposed to do Yellow Diamond?" She asked, almost begging. 

"Do you have anything else to report that wasn't included in your transmissions?"

"No, Yellow Diamond." Peridot said, bowing slightly. Without warning, Yellow Diamond swung her arm, tearing through Peridot's chest like it was tissue paper, throwing fragments of light through the air. 

"Peridot!" Steven screamed, jerking forward but being held back by Garnet and Pearl, who both winced at the act. 

The green Gem fell to her knees, the arm that supported her cut loose and dissipated from the blow that tore open her chest and removed her shoulder. Slowly, she began breaking down into light as her body projection lost stability. Normally, one would just poof after taking such heavy damage. But the crackling energy around Yellow Diamond's hand brought to mind the destabilizing forks. Shaking, she fearfully looked up at Yellow Diamond, who stared back down at her with a bored, slightly annoyed expression. 

She nudged Peridot over with a foot, prompting quite a bit more of her body to dissipate from the energy. The destabilizer forks were far more efficient, able to shut down a Gem's projection in seconds. But Yellow Diamond wasn't a hasty fighter. Completely paralyzing a foe was more useful, to get information, or to just enjoy the process more. But in this case, she didn't need information, and she really couldn't care about a single damaged, failed, peridot. Placing her foot on top of Peridot's forehead, directly onto her gem, she began to slowly press down. "I'm sorry." Peridot said quietly, tears beginning to stream down her face. Yellow Diamond didn't show any sign of taking notice, simply pushing down. Steven screamed in the background, shouting for the Gems to let him go, but they mostly focused on shielding his eyes from the scene. 

Finally, Peridot's head caved in from the pressure, helped along by the destabilizer, and her entire body projection poofed out of reality, leaving her green gem on the sand, still under the lowering foot of Yellow Diamond. With an audible crack, Yellow Diamond removed her foot and turned her attention toward the Crystal Gems. 

"Why would you do that?!" Steven shouted, crying. "She was your friend!"

"Friend? She was a peridot, sent here to check on operations on the planet, investigate a renegade's claims, and return with her objectives complete and you Crystal Gems in her custody." She shrugged slightly. "She failed utterly. Pointless. Besides, she was damaged. There's no point to even go through the trouble of reconditioning her if she'll never be of use again."

Steven screamed once more, and summoned his shield, throwing it at her as hard as he could. She extended her arm, trying to destabilize it, force it to poof, but the shield merely crackled, before landing its mark and knocking the larger Gem backwards. Eyes widening, she growled. "Attack!" She shouted to her troops. 

The Crystal Gems took formation, summoning their own weapons, and waited for Yellow Diamond's soldiers to come close enough to attack.

The fight was on.

* * *

"Steven, thank goodness you're alright! Don't worry, I made sure to bring bandages, and cold presses, and a a lot of water from the fountain and-"

"I'm, I'm okay Pearl." He smiled, missing more than a few teeth. He was covered in bruises, cuts, scorches, and scrapes. He was sure his nose was broken, but he knew how to deal with that himself. Licking his hand, he began to rub all over his face, content with the magic beginning to work its, well, magic, he walked out into the absolutely blasted area. 

Pearl began combing the beach, picking up one gem after another, before tossing them behind her. Each time making Steven wince. Finally, Pearl let out a sigh of relief. "Found her! I'd recognize her anywhere." She passed Amethyst over to steven, who gave the gem a mouthful of spit, and then stepped back to see another of his sort-of-moms reform.

Amethyst stretched, letting out a pained groan. "I don't want to do that again." She said simply. 

Garnet left the remains of Yellow Diamond's ship, the smoking and battered thing slowly sinking into the wet sand, along with dozens and dozens of fallen enemy gems. "Well, good work team." Garnet said resolutely. "We survived, and we protected the Earth." Bending down and picking Steven up, she pressed her forehead down to meat his own, "you did good today Steven. You saved all our lives."

"It was Mom's shield." 

"It was _you_." Garnet said, setting him down. "Unfortunately, we've got some dirtywork left over. Every gem we don't bubble here is going to cause trouble for us eventually, whether it's in a hundred years or a few thousand."

"I know. But can't we just let them be buried for a while? Go home and celebrate?" Amethyst tried. "We just saved the world! Somehow! And Steven must be exhausted!"

"This is something that needs to be done." Garnet said, unwilling to budge. "But... Steven, you can go back to the Temple. We'll be fine now, there's no more threat."

"No." He said, shaking his head and bending into the sand, bubbling a cracked enemy amethyst and teleporting it to the sealing room. "I'm fine. I can still help too."

Smiling, the four set to work finding and bubbling all the gems they could. Garnet personally saw to bubbling the Yellow Diamond gem. 

"Uh, guys?!" Steven shouted. In an instant, still in attack mode, the other three summoned their weapons and jumped to him. "I found Peridot." He held the incredibly fragmented green gem, wincing as it seemed to almost fall apart in his hands. Swishing spit inside his mouth, he let it dribble from his chin all over the green stone. It healed slowly, the damage lessening quite a bit, and Steven spit on it again, gently rubbing the liquid all over the gemstone.

Steven frowned as the cracks still didn't close all the way. Pearl put a hand on his shoulder. "Steven... her gem's been severely damaged. I don't think we can heal her completely."

"But... Yellow Diamond just, just ripped her open like that! And then stepped on her." He pleaded. 

Garnet took it from his hands gently. "The best we can do is bubble her for now, or else she'll start getting corrupted, and become a monster."

Steven nodded, and Garnet bubbled Peridot away. 

* * *

 

Having your body get poofed and retreating to your gem was a non-painful process, usually. Pain was something only attached to the body projections, as a way to make a gem act to protect themselves. An instinctual warning system, the same as organic life. But Gems didn't feel pain the same way, most of the time. Once it became clear that the damage to the projection was too severe, pain was merely irrelevant, another obstacle instead of a helpful warning, so it stopped. After a Gem is wounded badly enough, the pain will stop, in the seconds before they retreat to their gemstone. 

Not so for destabilizations. It was a constant process of rejecting the Gem from her own body. The projection couldn't hold up, and there only blaring warnings, or rather, deep pain, as the projected body collapsed into light before finally dissipating and poofing, leaving the gems behind still in a warning-rush, meaning they couldn't immediately reform.

Pain was also felt, and much more sharply, when the gemstone itself is damaged. That was life-threatening injury. 

Even deep within her gem, unconscious in most ways, Peridot's gem shivered with pain. Partially destabilized and then crushed, both body and gem. A horrible way to go, Peridot decided. And yet she wasn't dead. The pain would get to her eventually, she knew. Her personality would shift, her instincts, trying to stop the pain, would take over, and she would become nothing more than a brainless monster. She wasn't especially looking forward to it, but, with the amount of damage she had taken, she supposed it would several thousand years before it came to that point.

The pain lessened, slightly. And again. She wondered what happened, and silently thanked whatever it was that healed her. And then, as the color red seemed to surround her, she fell unconscious truly, every essence of movement within her mind going to sleep as the bubble wrapped around her. 

* * *

 

She felt her mind awaken within the gem, and grabbed at her energy, trying to reform. She didn't feel like a monster, and she wasn't used to power anything. She was still a free gem. Yellow Diamond must have taken mercy! Filled with joy, she tried to make herself appear presentable. Remaking her body, she reformed in the physical world, a flowing dress around her to hide her feet. She could reform the other one, now, but losing a foot physically from her psychic projection was a hard loss in energy. She was damaged in the walking department for a long time, maybe hundreds of years. 

But Yellow Diamond had let her heal anyway, no, more than that, to heal at this level, Yellow Diamond must have taken personal steps to help Peridot in her recovery. It hadn't even been a century, not even a tenth of a century!

She opened her eyes, and then took a panicked step back. "Steven?!" She shouted. 

"Peridot, you're okay!" He said, smiling. He was noticeably taller, wearing different clothes. A reformation of his own at some point?

"Where am I? What am I doing here? Where's Yellow Diamond?!"

"You're fine. You're in the Temple, here with me and the Crystal Gems. We beat Yellow Diamond a long time ago, and bubbled her."

"You... beat... Yellow... Diamond." She said slowly, unable to compute it. "But, but you're just a bunch of clods! There were only five of you! Even if you all fused together, the forces under Yellow Diamond and modern Gem tech should have been able to absolutely destroy you! You were doomed!"

"It was a tough fight!"

"So... What now?"

"Well, I don't know. I just wanted to help you. It always felt like you were one of the good guys, just misunderstood. Yellow Diamond shouldn't have done that to you, it was horrible."

"I failed." She said, looking down. "It was what I deserved."

"No!" He said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Nobody deserves that."

"...What do I do now? Is... is the invasion over? Who's in charge, if Yellow Diamond's captured like the other two?"

"We don't know. After we told Homeworld that we beat Yellow Diamond, they stopped responding to us."

"I... I need orders." Peridot mumbled. "What am I supposed to _do_ now!?"

Steven shrugged. "Anything you want. If you need any help, go downstairs and wait for a while in the living room, if you, uh, like to eat, there are snacks. We only found out how to heal corrupted or permanently damaged gems a few days ago, so I'm going through all the Gems that I promised I would help!"

He guided her to the door, gently moving her through it and into his house, where several other Gems, as well as the Crystal Gems, were sitting around. 

Pearl and Amethyst narrowed their eyes at the sight of her. "Peridot." Pearl said, acknowledging her roughly. 

She ignored her for several seconds, looking around still mostly at a loss, before finally sneering. "Clod." So, she was masterless, directionless, and now the entire system she had prided herself on being a component of was dismantled with the fall of Yellow Diamond. Sighing, she sat down on the ground and waited. The Steven would come down at some point and tell her what to do then. He had saved her, after all. 

Or maybe, she should just leave. Try to get back to Homeworld. 

She was free now, she could do as she wanted.


End file.
